LETTER - ‘Does the council really care about Eye?’

Reader Letters from the Diss Express, dissexpress.co.uk, @diss_express on Twitter

Published:10:19Tuesday 17 March 2015

Hitler’s bombers were less of a threat to Eye’s essential charm and character than Mid Suffolk District Council (MSDC). At least you could repair bomb damage.

MSDC wants to dramatically alter the town forever in a way that would be irreparable.

MSDC plans include tacking on a new town to the side of the existing one in allowing the siting of a huge gas-fired power station and then swamping the rest of the area known as the ‘airfield’ (but is actually farmland, with a sprawling industrial complex), and that’s in addition to the power station, gas plant and four towering turbines already stationed up there.

MSDC’s ability seemingly to do whatever it wants in Eye hinges greatly upon the fact that the area of the old Second World War airfield has been designated as a ‘brownfield’ site, that’s supposed to mean an area previously used for industry but is now derelict. Look around the ‘airfield’ and you’ll certainly see brown fields, now turning green with the arrival of spring.

Ah, but think about all the jobs, boasts MSDC, up to 3,000 of them. Really? The type of high-tech industry MSDC wants to encourage to Eye typically has very small numbers of employees, most of them highly skilled in very specific fields, which is not what the local region is crying out for to ease the unemployment situation, and when you consider that several existing industrial units on the periphery of the ‘airfield’ have sat vacant since long before the recession, you wonder where all these new businesses are supposed to come from.

What’s also galling is how little MSDC seems to care about the views of local people. Its latest missive inviting comments about the ‘airfield’ development plans comprised a few black and white lines of type stapled to an obscure phone pole in Eye. It’s almost as though the MSDC actually doesn’t want to hear from us.